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This really should't be a big deal. It's just like most insurances. You have your primary insurance and then everything else is secondary (dental, eye). First you submit to your primary (in this case it's your personal medical ins.) then to your secondary(in this case your trip insurance carrier). Whatever primary doesn't cover, your secondary should cover up to their coverage limits. If your primary doesn't cover the claim at all, the secondary will, again up to its limits, but they first require you to submit it to your primary to see what they will pay if anything.

We have to do this all the time with our dental. Even though we know our primary medical won't be paying for the services, we have to submit to them as primary as well as to our secondary dental insurance. It still gets covered by dental, it's just a process they require.

Since you're a young, attractive woman, Primary vs. Secondary may not be a problem. (Thought I would throw in the attractive part even though it has no bearing on a claim. :D ) However since many people who cruise are on Medicare and Medicare doesn't pay for out of country claims, having to submit to them even though you will be denied will greatly lengthen the claim process. On a small dental claim that's not a problem. Different story on a big medical bill internationally.

Also some travel insurance policies will assist getting you admitted to a foreign hospital for treatment without you having to shell out big bucks out of your pocket for initial care. I don't know of U.S. medical plans that do that.

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Instead of writing everything again I figured I would just copy and paste my Yelp review of CSA. Here it is, complete with a response from CSA and my response to her:

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I purchased insurance through CSA sold by Vacations To Go after I bought a cruise for me, my wife and my daughter. I was in Afghanistan on my second combat tour and wanted to do something nice with my family upon my return and with never knowing exactly when or what could happen with the Army, I decided to buy insurance for protection.

I was injured in Afghanistan and sent to Ft Lewis, WA to recover and was unable to go on our cruise. When I contacted Vacations To Go and CSA I was told to fill out some forms and get a few doctor's signatures and we would be refunded. After a few weeks of runarounds, CSA informed me that they were not going to honor the policy because I was injured due to an act of war.

It's amazing to me that they'll go ahead and sell me a policy in case something happens and when the exact thing happens that I'm supposed to be covered for they can just refuse to pay. I'm not even sure what recourse I have now.

I had used Vacations To Go before on two other cruises and bought CSA Protection for each of those and since I never had to use it, I assumed it was a good thing. After this experience, I will never use CSA again nor will I ever recommend them.

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After I wrote that I received a response from a "Kathy T" although now the name has been changed to a "Cassie M". Here is her response followed by mine:

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"We at CSA understand and respect service members' needs, including coverage for having their leave revoked at any time. In your policy, it states that Acts of War aren't covered. We encourage our customers to read their description of coverage, and we offer a 10-day free look on all of our travel insurance plans. Customers can cancel their coverage and get a full refund if they aren't completely satisfied as long as they haven't left for their trip."

I sent this to Kathy T in response to her post:

If you "respected service members' needs" this provision would never be in place to begin with. Anything that comes up that we would need to use insurance for, could have resulted from an act of war. Be it a change of orders (which mine technically were since I had orders sending me to Ft. Lewis) to missing a helicopter flight off my COP to go home because they needed the helo somewhere else (act of war?) to getting blown up.

As an infantryman I lived on a tiny Combat Outpost in the mountains of Afghanistan on the Pakistan border and purchased this trip while traveling through a base with internet and phone connection. I had all of a few hours to find and purchase something nice for my family. Since time was a factor I had to rely on the salesperson to explain my coverage to me. I explained what I needed and why I needed it and was sold coverage. The same thing I had done on my previous tour to Afghanistan.

After getting injured and returning back to the US I was made to jump through hoops to get you the proper medical documents you required of me and after a few weeks you denied my claim.

I should have never been sold the policy to begin with and without the policy I would have never purchased the trip.

On another note; while speaking to someone in your office, I was told that he would "no longer speak to me about this since I threatened legal action". That was untrue. I said that I would go speak to our JAG office on base (there's nothing that JAG can do outside of the military) and ask them for advice since I know that as a service member there are certain laws in place to protect us while deployed. Very unprofessional.

I stand by my decision to never use your "services" again and I will never recommend you to anybody, civilian or service member, again.

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I can, however, recommend Vacations to Go because they stepped up and took care of everything that CSA wouldn't.

My family and I, along with 7 other friends, are going on a cruise July 16, 2016 and because of the bad taste left from CSA, I avoided purchasing the travel insurance for the 10 of us. I really like the peace of mind I get from having it, but it's pointless if it's unusable. Maybe I'll try USAA like others have suggested...

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This is not a happy situation, but when one purchases travel insurance it is very important to actually read the policy. My Global Alert policy for an upcoming trip specifically excludes acts of war, and I do recall seeing that exclusion on other policies we have bought. There is always a cancellation period after the policy is purchased so you can get your money back if the policy does not meet your needs.

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This is not a happy situation, but when one purchases travel insurance it is very important to actually read the policy. My Global Alert policy for an upcoming trip specifically excludes acts of war, and I do recall seeing that exclusion on other policies we have bought. There is always a cancellation period after the policy is purchased so you can get your money back if the policy does not meet your needs.

Yes, that's a very unfortunate situation, but a great example of why you have to read and understand every word on every policy you're interested in. I sometimes wonder if I'm wasting my money on travel insurance. I check the wording of the cancellation clause. Almost all comprehensive plans reimburse you if you cancel due to major sickness of a family member, but what you consider to be a major sickness/event, and who's a family member, may not be what the insurance company thinks they are. In some policies, a doctor must advise you to stay home with the person. While I would guess that most doctors would do that if the illness/event is pretty serious, that's still one thing that may trip you up. Also, if you think you might need a dentist, check the dental coverage wording. Usually it only applies to injury to sound teeth or something like that. Some cover pain management. There are differences.

Just as an aside, here are a couple other online insurance comparison sites I'm aware of, although I haven't used any, so can't comment further:

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This is not a happy situation, but when one purchases travel insurance it is very important to actually read the policy. My Global Alert policy for an upcoming trip specifically excludes acts of war, and I do recall seeing that exclusion on other policies we have bought. There is always a cancellation period after the policy is purchased so you can get your money back if the policy does not meet your needs.

I agree. Everyone should read their policy IF they're able to. I was sold a policy with the salesperson being fully aware of what I wanted the policy for (mainly in case I got hurt or killed) and he was also aware that I would be unable to read the policy because I didn't have access to the Internet. I had to rely solely on his word. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to read the policy until after I'd been injured and by then it was much too late.

I'm sure there are plenty of ethical insurance companies out there, I just think that CSA isn't one of them.

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I think the problem I have with the "acts of war" exclusion is that, if they know you're in the military, this clause could give them the freedom to deny every servicemember's claim, regardless of circumstance. For example; If a flight is delayed leaving Afghanistan and I miss my trip, they could deny my claim because the flight was from a war zone so the "acts of war" clause covers it. It's way too broad.

Just my $.02

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I'm sorry you had the bad insurance experience. I don't buy travel insurance from my travel agents because they only offer one company. I learned my lesson about buying directly from the insurance company too because there is no one to fight for you on a claim.

Last year I switched to Steve at the tripinsurancestore. He deals with several insurance companies and guided me based upon my specific info. Different trips with different needs were directed to different insurance policies. He only sells insurance. The TA's primary business is selling the trip. I'd like to think that Steve would have mentioned the act of war exclusion.

I referred my sister to him for a trip that she then needed to file a small claim on. He guided her with the claim. So far I've liked his personal service.

Now that you know about that clause, perhaps you could test your next trip ins seller to see if they'd mention it based upon your info. If not, Run!

Good luck in your recovery.

Edited June 18, 2016 by ChucktownSteve

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Thanks. The Army retired me in 2013 and I'm good now. We still love cruises and have one coming up in a few weeks. I need to find my own Steve I can trust for all our future cruises. It does alleviate a lot of stress knowing you're covered "just in case"

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I'm sorry you had the bad insurance experience. I don't buy travel insurance from my travel agents because they only offer one company. I learned my lesson about buying directly from the insurance company too because there is no one to fight for you on a claim.

Last year I switched to Steve at the tripinsurancestore. He deals with several insurance companies and guided me based upon my specific info. Different trips with different needs were directed to different insurance policies. He only sells insurance. The TA's primary business is selling the trip. I'd like to think that Steve would have mentioned the act of war exclusion.

I referred my sister to him for a trip that she then needed to file a small claim on. He guided her with the claim. So far I've liked his personal service.

Now that you know about that clause, perhaps you could test your next trip ins seller to see if they'd mention it based upon your info. If not, Run!

Good luck in your recovery.

Thanks. The Army retired me in 2013 and I'm good now. We still love cruises and have one coming up in a few weeks. I need to find my own Steve I can trust for all our future cruises. It does alleviate a lot of stress knowing you're covered "just in case"

First, Thank you for your service!

It is people like you who make it possible for all of us to do things like enjoying cruises in the first place.

Now... you don't need to find your "own Steve"... you can use "THE Steve"! :D

As long as those who purchase insurance from him explain their specific circumstances, he'll do his best (and he is VERY knowledgeable) to help them get the most appropriate insurance (or tell them that there isn't a suitable policy for that particular situation; he won't knowingly sell a policy that isn't of use to someone).

He's saved us from one serious mistake, and he's also sold us policies for several trips (cruise and air/land).

Of those, we had two claims (one quite large), and there wasn't any funny business with getting reimbursed.

He's also told us when something "extra" (meaning it would have cost us more) was NOT useful to us, and explained why, so we could learn.

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I don't know how to cross-reference threads, so I'll just chime in (re-post from another thread) with my very positive experience with Steve at tripinsurancestore.com

I can't say enough good things about them. My DH used tripinsurancestore.com for a non-cruise, independent international trip last year. Due to a health emergency, he had to cancel less than 24 hrs before the trip. When we filed a claim with the insurance provider (trip insurance is more like a referral agency that pre-screens companies), the provider balked because one of our travel vendors refused to provide the right paperwork. (a small agency for independent travelers in Cheshire, England) Even though we had bank money transfer records, emails from the British agency with promises to send the paperwork, etc., the insurance agency was going to refuse payment. After many calls over several days that went nowhere, it occurred to me to call tripinsurancestore.com for help. They resolved my issues within a few hours and we got our full payment. The business owner, Steve, took care of this personally, and sent me a follow up email.

I learned something valuable from this. Having an insurance referral agent (broker) like tripsinsurancestore.com is a lifesaver in working out any problems with the insurance company. The insurance company couldn't care less about my individual case, but they wanted to keep a good relationship with tripinsurance store!

If you go to their website, they have a lot of information about what to consider in trip insurance. They also have a tool where you put in your information and you can run a spreadsheet comparing several companies they work with. If you have any questions, just give them a call. They really care about their customers, and they almost always answer the phone right away during business hours.

Believe it or not, I don't have any personal stake in this company. But they really helped me out in what was looking like a very helpless situation!

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I have used InsureAndGo for the last few trips. They don't have an annual policy in the US, but they do allow you to just get the Medical and Trip Interruption benefits for a very reasonable price. Just set the value of your trip to $0.

I've never had to make a claim, so I can't speak to that.

Oops! I was just getting a quote for my next trip in 2017, and they no longer allow a $0 trip cost. However, putting in $100 gets a quote that is still reasonable.

Edited July 8, 2016 by RVRoadie

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Hmmm, I tried insureandgo and it kept telling me "no products available for these requirements". Thought it might be due to our ages (76 and 70) but even when I put in 56 and 50 (for experimentation only) it said the same thing. I tried with various trip costs as well. It would be nice to tell you what the problem is!